Sunday, December 18, 2011

Advent Calendar - December 18 - Christmas Stockings

“The stockings were hung by the chimney” didn’t really apply
to our Christmas stockings because we never lived in a house with a fireplace!
But we did have stockings, probably hung on a nail or with tape on the wall,
like the one in this photo taken at my sister Jane’s home when her children
were young:

It was always fun to get up on Christmas morning and see
what Santa had left in your stocking. It was filled with little gifts: toys or
games, a small book, pen or pencil, playing cards, jacks, candy. Santa always left
breakfast in your stocking too: an apple, a banana, an orange stuffed down in
the toe, and some unshelled nuts!

I don’t have my childhood Christmas stocking, having lost it
in a hasty move as a young adult. I wish I had it: my parents bought it for me
in Alaska, during one of those years when Daddy had been working steadily and had
money to spend.

Here is a photo of one of my son’s Christmas stockings. This
one was “just for show,” that is, Santa didn’t fill it with goodies on
Christmas Eve. It was given to him by his Grandma Nettie.

Family tradition is that you only have a Christmas stocking
until you are 18 or married. But I continue to fill stockings
every year for my son, his wife, and my two grandchildren, even though all of
them are beyond the mandated age! Each has a stocking with his or her initial
on it that is filled with silly toys, sample-size toiletries, candy, socks, and
other odds and ends. (My daughter-in-law Christina was shocked when she got her
first stocking—she was concerned we were trying to tell her something by giving
her deodorant, a toothbrush and sample-size toothpaste!)

It will be fun when I can add stockings for
great-grandchildren to the fray!